Why iHeart Media is ruining journalism (06:54). We'll also tackle the reason you shouldn't brace for anything, as well as discuss how antecedent problems can be fixed. And, we'll hear some examples of breaking news that isn't.

Intro music is "Feelin Good" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Reporters and anchors love to try to save us from ourselves and they love to tell us what to do. But that's not their job. You'd think it IS their job based on the examples they give us in this edition of The Death Of News.

Radio and TV anchors don't need to tell us what they've learned. And it's never necessary to say the same thing twice back-to-back.

KTLA gets the details of the October 1st government shutdown wrong; Fox 11 uses cliches and reports on stuff that didn't happen.

Reporters need to pay attention to what they write after they do an interview; it wouldn't hurt anchors to cut back on the cliches; and everybody needs get the words right.

Uh oh. One LA TV news anchor breaches a basic rule of journalism and convicts Charlie Kirk's alleged killer. Using only percentages to tell crime stat stories can be misleading. Two tents of an inch of rain ain't nothin' for the LA River. And, the rain stops...redundantly.

Looking at the use of adjectives, natural sound and wrong words. Included are examples from Arizona's Family (Channels 2 & 5), Fox 12 in Portland, KCAL in Los Angeles and more!

In this episode, I hammer an iHeart 24/7 NewsSource anchor over misinformation and bad form; WBZ Radio in Boston gets a thumbs up; and Los Angeles TV weather people get a thumbs down.

Sloppy writing leads to wrong adjective use, horses being labeled as wildlife, an anchor dropping an important W in the 5 W's of journalism, and more! Also included: A birthday shout-out to newswriting guru Mervin Block.

Journalists often don't think it through when they write or are handed a script to read. This leads to a lot of fodder for critics who catch this stuff. I caught a word that made me exclaim, "Duh!" And that lead me to search out some classic cases of parroting and cliche abuse.